


Don't Say a Word

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:10:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4351919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some couplings don't last; some women aren't meant to be mothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Alcohol and isolation had made Craig Boone seem far more attractive than he had any right to be. And in the cold, clinical dark of the Brotherhood of Steel safe house, Six climbed into his lap and irrevocably changed their future together.

She regretted the fling as soon as she woke up in his arms. Getting shot in the head had dried up most of her prospects, but that didn’t mean sleeping with Boone hadn’t been a mistake. They’d both been lonely and drunk, but getting involved wasn’t good for either of them.

She wasn’t interested in connecting emotionally with her partners, and Boone wasn’t interested in being cast aside. He’d always been protective of her, but after their night together, his attention had taken a turn for the possessive. Boone forgot that she’d been a Courier long before she’d been his companion, and he insisted on accompanying her everywhere she went. He hovered and breathed down her neck and looked at her with those sad blue eyes and it was more than she could handle.

Six was afraid Boone was going to tempt her into breaking her rule against romantic relationships. It was selfish to send him back to Novac, but she convinced herself that it was for the better. She couldn’t let anyone distract her from repelling the Legion, even if that anyone was everything she had thought she wanted in a man.

She did her best to put Boone out of her mind, but it wasn’t easy. What she was feeling wasn’t guilt, per se, but her stomach twisted unpleasantly whenever she thought about the way he’d reacted to being sent away. She’d broken his heart, completely by accident. Manny Vargas would never forgive her.

A month later, Six nearly fainted. One moment, she was dragging her broken leg through the scorched halls of the Hidden Valley bunker, the next; she was on her back with Raul’s concerned face hovering over her. He hauled her to her feet and dragged her out of the bunker, but not without obliquely referencing the night she’d spent with Boone.

They made their way back to Old Mormon Fort, and Six cornered Arcade. Her subconscious mind already knew what was wrong, but she refused to acknowledge it for fear that she might be right.

Even after the test came back positive, Six refused to say the word ‘pregnant.’ To do so would loan credence to the interloper in her womb, and she was not prepared to accept the existence of the rapidly expanding bundle of cells in her belly.

Luckily, the pink, pre-war pamphlet Arcade had given her didn’t use the p-word either. It referred to her state as her ‘delicate condition.’ She wasn’t pregnant; she was ‘in that way.’ The pamphlet referred to the accident growing inside her in flowery, euphemistic terms, and for that, she was grateful. The lack of accurate, technical language enabled her to read the damned thing without panicking and burying it in her weapons trunk for someone (Veronica) to stumble across (find while snooping). She’d talked her way in and out of dozens of tricky situations, but there would be no peace once her companions discovered her blessed miracle.

She wasn’t ready for anyone other than Arcade and Raul to know. Hell, she wasn’t even ready for them to know, but they were her doctor and her closest friend, respectively. She’d have an easier time walking naked through Quarry Junction than keeping secrets from them.

So she’d let Arcade take her pulse and listen to her heart and look into her mouth and ears. She was nice to him, she let him poke her and prod her, and she peed in a cup. He’d rewarded her patience by telling her that she had a tiny human inside of her.

Of course, he hadn’t said it like that. He said “you’re pregnant” and then he said “who’s the father?”

When she didn’t answer, he sighed, handed her the pamphlet, and told her to think on it. He launched into a long lecture about blood pressure and weight gain. She listened to him without comprehending a single word, and returned to the Lucky 38 in a similar state of shell shock. She spend a sleepless night poring over _You and Your Illegitimate Child_ , growing increasingly agitated.

The pamphlet had evidently been written for a very different kind of girl. Six didn’t have parents that she’d embarrassed “by violating the sacred American values of chastity and family” and she didn’t have the option of “visiting an aunt” for nine months until the whole mess blew over.

She had alliances to forge and battles to win. Six didn’t have the time to reflect on how she’d “shamed herself, her family, and her community” by giving into her “selfish female desire for physical affection.” She had a war to win, dammit, and she refused to let the contents of her treacherous uterus dictate the next eighteen years of her life.

She figured she had another four weeks before she needed to start worrying. She hadn’t listened to most of what Arcade had said about the charted development of her li’l accident. But from what little she’d understood of the little she’d listened to, it was still a featureless blob of potential limbs. She had a month before it started to inconvenience her, and until it got in her way, she was determined to ignore her condition.

Her stubborn denial of reality frustrated Arcade to no end, but she brushed away his well-meant concern with rude words and ruder hand gestures. She told him in no uncertain terms that the contents of her womb were her business and hers alone. If she wanted his help, she would ask for it, and until then, he could take his solicitude and shove it up his ass.

She knew she was being irrational. But whenever she thought about the bundle of cells in her belly, she pictured a time bomb. There was an army was gathering on either side of the river, and if Six wanted to win the war, she couldn’t have anyone thinking of her as weak or vulnerable. And the most expedient way to discredit herself in the NCR’s and the Legion’s eyes was the one she had, unwittingly, chosen. The way she saw it, she had to choose between winning the war and nurturing the unwanted product of an ill advised one-night-stand.

Six thought of herself as a woman destined for greatness. She intended to see her name written in lights and in the history books, and she had decided long ago that she couldn’t let her mistakes define her.

So she had sworn Arcade to secrecy, promised to think about what she was going to do, slung her shotgun over her shoulder, and set out for Red Rock Canyon with Raul at her side and Rex at her heels.


	2. Chapter 2

Six’s hands were shaking from nicotine withdrawal as she set pencil to paper. The Followers didn’t allow non-medicinal chems in Old Mormon Fort, and twenty hours of back labor meant she hadn’t had a smoke since the night before. Julie said they were a humanitarian organization, but any group that would deny cigarettes to a woman in the process of giving birth was clearly run by closet sadists.

 _Dear Boone,_ she began.

 _I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you wanted, but I can’t do it._ Six glanced up from her paper at the makeshift bassinet in the corner. Her as-of-yet-unnamed daughter was sleeping fitfully, her red face twisted into a scowl and her tiny hands clenched into fists. She was an ugly, unexceptional baby, and the thought didn’t make Six feel as guilty as it should have. She felt bad, but mostly for herself.

 _I never wanted this, any of this._ The baby stirred in her sleep. Six froze. She didn’t know what to do if the baby started crying. Her breasts were heavy and swollen from milk, but the little girl refused to nurse and refused to take comfort from her mother’s touch. She wailed inconsolably until Six handed her off to Boone or Julie in a fit of despondent inadequacy. Julie told her not to worry, that mothering takes practice, but Six couldn’t suppress the feeling that she was doing something wrong.

Babies were supposed to love their mamas, and mamas were supposed to love their babies, but it seemed she and her daughter had missed that particular boat. _I would be a bad mom, anyway. You’ll do much better on your own._

_Love, Six_

She hesitated. Love wasn’t the right word. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t think she was capable of loving him. She’d gotten drunk and ended up pregnant with his baby, but that didn’t mean they were in love.

She erased the offending word.

_Six_

When she told Boone she was pregnant, he promised to take care of her. She laughed shrilly and told him not to be ridiculous. He left the next day, and returned a week later with an armload of dense medical texts about pregnancy and parenting. He wanted to ‘do right by her,’ to prepare himself for their baby’s arrival. He exhausted himself poring over the books, and she didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wasting his time.

The books were stacked in a corner of the tent, and the sight of him made her breath catch in her throat. Her eyes flicked from the books to the baby, and she unfolded the letter to add a postscript.

_Her name is Regina._

With that, she hauled herself to her feet, wincing with every movement. She laid the note in the bassinet next to her newborn daughter, and Regina’s pale blue eyes opened and locked onto Six’s face. The baby’s mouth began to tremble, but she didn’t cry.

“Sorry I couldn’t be what you needed,” Six whispered. “Be good to your daddy, hear?”

Regina seemed to understand, and Six’s eyes filled with tears. She dragged her fist roughly across her eye. “Be sweet, little girl. Don’t break his heart again.” She kissed her daughter on the forehead, then turned her back on the baby and walked out of the tent.

She thought she heard a baby wailing as she limped through Freeside, and the sound tore holes in her heart. Six told herself that it could have been any baby, but was grateful to leave Freeside behind. She took a shot of Med-X to dull the pain and walked until she reached RepConn headquarters. Raul was waiting for her, leaning up against the building and cigarette. He acknowledged her with a curt nod, and fell into step behind her. They set out for Hoover Dam together. The Legion attacked 12 hours after they arrived.

Several months later, Six heard that Boone had returned to Novac in the wake of the NCR’s victory. He was living a quiet life, raising their daughter and working the night shift in the nest in Dinky’s mouth.

The news was inexplicably hard to hear, and she spent the next several days locked in her rooms in the Lucky 38. She was nearly overcome with the desire to take her baby bac, but she knew better than to go to Novac.

She’d had her chance, and she'd made her choice.


End file.
